Who was the strongest magical girl in this world?
When asked such a question, nine out of ten people would undoubtedly think of Ruby. After all, it was already famous that she had been born with overwhelmingly vast magical power.
In other words, there was no room for disagreement that the strongest magical girl was Ruby.
Then, to change the question slightly, who was the most perfect magical girl in this world?
First of all, Ruby was excluded. Separate from strength, she was still clumsy in some aspects of handling magical power, so she could hardly be called perfect.
To this question, I would like to answer with the name of the magical girl Sapphire.
A monster who had debuted around the same time as Ruby, yet whose number of slain monsters had already climbed into the thousands.
Since that was enough to compete with the magical girls of past generations, she had even earned the rather stylish alias of “Flash” from the public.
The reason she had been able to reach such a realm was because Sapphire was a genius of a different sort from Ruby.
A hexagonal jewel outstanding in every aspect. Would that be the right way to put it?
For a magical girl, whose destiny was to save citizens even a minute or a second faster, speed was an extremely important factor.
In that sense, Sapphire had judgment befitting her innate intelligence, along with battle sense honed through repeated reversals, so what more needed to be said?
Ruby subjugated powerful foes, while Sapphire swept away enemies in great numbers.
As if each complemented the other, they protected the peace of this country—
‘Why would such an esteemed person come to such a shabby place…?’
No, nothing was confirmed yet. No matter how perfect the timing was, the possibility that this girl was Amber’s classmate Sophia, and furthermore the magical girl Sapphire, was slim.
I desperately denied reality and tried to ignore what was happening right now.
A girl in a school uniform had appeared, roughly opening the café door. It was unmistakably the uniform of Jewelry Academia, the school Amber and Rabi attended.
After looking around the shop once, she began approaching the counter where I was.
For a moment, I thought I saw that the name on her name tag began with “S,” but it probably wasn’t Sophia and was something like Song Daeho instead.
“Huh? Isn’t that Sophia!”
It clearly sounded like Amber had just called someone by the name Sophia, but I didn’t hear it. I wanted to pretend I hadn’t.
“…Amber. What a coincidence.”
“This is our first time meeting outside school, right? What brings you here?”
But reality was cruel.
The person Amber had mentioned as Rabi’s friend—in other words, the girl named Sophia—gave me the gut feeling that she was the magical girl Sapphire.
And now, that very person was standing right in front of me.
‘Is this déjà vu…?’
The way the puzzle pieces clicked into place felt similar to the moment Rabi had confessed to me.
I felt like I wanted to return to the me of moments ago, who had been chatting with Amber without a care in the world.
For now, I decided not to act suspiciously and just serve her normally. I didn’t even know what she was after yet.
“Just one person?”
“Isn’t that obvious from looking?”
Unlike earlier, she was smiling, but for some reason her tone was anything but ordinary. It was the kind of tone that seemed openly meant to mess with me.
“…Please sit wherever you like.”
At my answer, Sophia left the counter and began looking for a suitable seat.
‘The magical girl Sapphire, huh.’
The threat level assigned to her by Lapis, the boss of the Silver Order, was 3. For reference, the maximum was 5.
‘At least, unlike Ruby, she hasn’t shown any signs of interfering with the Silver Order, so her threat level is on the low side, but…’
Of course, that didn’t mean there had been no contact at all. There were records of her fighting the Silver Order’s small fry several times.
But that was only because she had punished conspicuous crimes; she had not shown signs of targeting us on a large scale.
‘On the other hand, Ruby’s been smashing the Silver Order as if she had some grudge against us.’
For that reason, Ruby had been branded with an undisputed threat level of 5.
Since we were an evil organization, being resented was probably only natural in a way. If she had suffered damage in the past, I could understand her actions too.
However, I absolutely couldn’t let my guard down against Sapphire either. In my mind, her threat level had risen to about 4 now.
‘She hasn’t made any particular moves so far.’
She was merely sitting in a suitable seat and chatting with Amber, who had approached her at some point.
“I have a bit of business with this café today. Miss Amber, are you acquainted with the owner?”
“Acquainted, I guess… More like a close older guy? Something like that.”
I was grateful that she thought of me that way, but I couldn’t help feeling like she was giving unnecessary information to an enemy.
‘Well, if Sapphire came here after catching the scent of the Silver Order, she would’ve attacked me right away.’
The fact that she hadn’t meant her objective lay elsewhere.
‘Still, I definitely need to stay on guard.’
But there was no guarantee that something that had already happened once wouldn’t happen twice.
Just as Ruby had tied me up with a rope and one-sidedly confessed to me, there was a possibility that she, too, would suddenly change and restrain me.
‘Should I use the method from yesterday?’
It was the method I had used to leave Amber a note without Rabi knowing. Though this time, I would use a safer version.
[ Ask Sophia properly why she came here. There’s a chance Rabi is involved. ]
That should do it. With a sentence this short, she could check the contents without having to open the messenger app.
I pressed the send button on my smartphone, then left the counter to take Sophia’s order.
***
Rabi’s condition had been strange lately.
Sophia, her childhood friend and best friend, realized that fact roughly a month ago.
“Then for this problem… Miss Rabi, please solve it.”
“…….”
“Miss Rabi?”
The frequency with which she spaced out while eating or during class had noticeably increased.
Of course, losing oneself in thought and recalling something was an extremely normal thing for a human being, but this time, the situation was different.
At times she seemed dazed, and at other times she even committed the bizarre act of rubbing her lower abdomen with an enraptured expression.
“Are you not feeling well today?”
“You were thinking about something else during class too. Want me to go with you to the nurse’s office?”
“No, it’s nothing. I just have a little something to think about.”
She calmly denied her classmates’ worries, but Sophia, who had watched Rabi since they were young, could tell.
Rabi was currently holding on to a serious worry.
“…Rabi, is something troubling you?”
“Hm? Nothing at all.”
Sophia mustered the courage to speak to Rabi, but the answer that came back was nothing more than a gentle refusal.
At first, she had no choice but to leave it be, but as that period grew longer and longer, Sophia’s worry grew day by day.
After all, the two of them were magical girls who protected the peace of the world—Ruby and Sapphire.
If Rabi’s worries continued like this, there was a high possibility it would interfere with her activities as a magical girl.
After agonizing for several days, Sophia caught the tail of Rabi’s worries on an ordinary day after school.
She had witnessed Rabi, after school ended, entering the basement of a certain building.
“…Rabi?”
When Sophia secretly followed her down into the basement, she found a café there by the name of Eclipse.
A café built underground in a deserted alley. It was a choice that made one want to ask whether they had any intention of doing business.
“Why would Rabi come to a place like this…”
After first returning home and continuing to reason it out, Sophia finally arrived at one conclusion.
That enraptured expression she had seen countless times in the classroom. It was the face of a girl in love, one that she did not show even to Sophia, her friend.
In other words, the possibility she could think of was that her best friend was having secret meetings with someone at this café.
If so, she had to thoroughly investigate the man in the shop and confirm whether he was someone worthy of Rabi.
That was the reason Sophia came to this café alone.
“Huh? Isn’t that Sophia!”
As soon as she opened the door and entered, Sophia turned her head at the sound of someone calling her name, and there she discovered an unexpected person.
“…Amber. What a coincidence.”
A classmate from the same second-year Class A, Amber.
She was a female student with such wide connections that there was no one at Jewelry Academia who did not know her.
“This is our first time meeting outside school, right? What brings you here?”
“Yes, well…”
For now, there didn’t seem to be any customers other than herself and Amber. Aside from them, there was only a man who appeared to be the owner of the shop.
“Just one person?”
“Isn’t that obvious from looking?”
“…Please sit wherever you like.”
She gave a slightly curt answer and watched his reaction, but he did not particularly retort and maintained a mature attitude.
‘For now, it’s not this man. He has no spirit, so he doesn’t suit Rabi at all.’
An unremarkably ordinary appearance and a manner that could never be mistaken for that of a chaebol.
Of course, wealth was not directly connected to a person’s worth, but she could not imagine her childhood friend falling for someone like this.
‘I didn’t think I’d find him in one try anyway.’
Since there happened to be a classmate here who seemed familiar with the shop, Sophia planned to mix in casual chatter and dig up information in various ways.
Fortunately, Rabi was currently so busy she had no time to catch her breath, so there was truly no worry of running into her at this shop.
Sophia had a reason she absolutely had to find that unknown man, no matter how long it took.
‘Because I’m the only one in the world who truly loves Rabi.’
…Though it was a somewhat less than honorable reason.